event
Opening Lecture of the 2026-2027 Academic Year
Thursday
15
October
Carol Graham

Hope, Despair, and Life Outcomes : Lessons From The New Science of Wellbeing

Carol Graham, Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and College Park Professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland
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Auditorium Ivan Pictet A1A, Maison de la paix, Geneva

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We live in increasingly polarized and unequal societies, not only when it comes to incomes and opportunities, but also in terms of how people feel about their lives. Why should economists and other social scientists care about how people feel? Feelings of subjective well-being, such as happiness and hope, have become important metrics in these disciplines because they predict health, productivity, and labor market outcomes, among other things. Carol Graham’s most recent research is about the importance of hope, and why we should consider it an additional independent dimension of well-being. Hope, which is in part genetically determined and in part shaped by the environments that individuals develop in, is perhaps the most important dimension of well-being for future outcomes. Based on her recent research which focuses on tracking trends in lost hope as a key factor in understanding the rising numbers of “deaths of despair” and premature mortality in the United States, this lecture will review empirical evidence and research-based lessons that suggest possible policies for restoring hope in populations where it has been lost.

Carol Graham is Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings, College Park Professor at the University of Maryland, and a Gallup Senior Scientist. She served on a National Academy of Sciences panel on well-being metrics in 2012-13, received Pioneer Awards from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2017 and 2021, and a Lifetime Distinguished Scholar award from the International Society of Quality-of-Life Studies (2018), and is currently a member of a UN Commission developing progress indicators to complement GDP. She has twice served as a Vice President at Brookings, as Special Advisor to the Inter-American Development Bank, Visiting Fellow at the World Bank, and consultant to the IMF.

Welcome and opening remarks:

  • Katja Gentinetta, President of the Foundation Board, Geneva Graduate Institute
  • Anne Hiltpold, President of the Council of State and State Councillor for the Department of Public Instruction, Training and Youth
  • Marie-Laure Salles, Director of the Geneva Graduate Institute

Keynote speech:

  • Carol Graham, Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and College Park Professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland

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